Wyrmlord
Arcane
- Joined
- Feb 3, 2008
- Messages
- 28,886
Making a challenging game ultimately requires out-thinking the player in advance, which can be a fairly demanding endeavour.
So this means that the game might not be wholly challenging, or, like Daggerfall, loses all challenge once you get your character to a high enough level and with good enough equipment. And that's what happens with the more average game, and even with older and relatively more challenging games, you will see the same thing that you more or less see with some of the better recent games - "It started out medium to hard, but got way too easy midway into it" or "It was pretty easy for most of the game except the end".
But there's obviously that something else, which can still give that incentive to enjoy what's going on, despite the game starting to get easier or being not entirely challenging. What is that something else for you?
For me, it's still being able to experiment with all the elaborate ways of torturing enemies. Sure, the fight is not too hard, but I can still enjoy burning that guy, bringing those few into a windstorm, having the summoned tiger eat up the mages, and so on. It's why despite my disgust and dislike of KotOR games, I still enjoyed Plagueing a large number of Gweedo-look-alike bounty hunters, Choking all of them at the same time, slowly burning them with Force Storms, and knocking down the remaining Mandalorians with Force Winds so that they can have lightsabers thrown in their direction.
Or like in BaK, where you had even more ways of sitting back and seeing enemies tortured. You could place mines all over the battle map, and see moredhel keep stumbling over them. With Mad God's Rage, you'd see the most powerful enemies brought to their knees by a lightning storm striking each one of them until they are dead. You could have Rusalki surround them and pound them with missiles, with them having nowhere to go. And you could have a single Firestorm push back all of them away or kill them simultaneously.
All in all, I guess if a game can't make you feel pounded down upon and abused, it can at least still make you feel like an ultimate destroyer. The only thing that is bad is the middle ground of having small ordinary weapons and equipment and still easily killing all enemies in the game.
So this means that the game might not be wholly challenging, or, like Daggerfall, loses all challenge once you get your character to a high enough level and with good enough equipment. And that's what happens with the more average game, and even with older and relatively more challenging games, you will see the same thing that you more or less see with some of the better recent games - "It started out medium to hard, but got way too easy midway into it" or "It was pretty easy for most of the game except the end".
But there's obviously that something else, which can still give that incentive to enjoy what's going on, despite the game starting to get easier or being not entirely challenging. What is that something else for you?
For me, it's still being able to experiment with all the elaborate ways of torturing enemies. Sure, the fight is not too hard, but I can still enjoy burning that guy, bringing those few into a windstorm, having the summoned tiger eat up the mages, and so on. It's why despite my disgust and dislike of KotOR games, I still enjoyed Plagueing a large number of Gweedo-look-alike bounty hunters, Choking all of them at the same time, slowly burning them with Force Storms, and knocking down the remaining Mandalorians with Force Winds so that they can have lightsabers thrown in their direction.
Or like in BaK, where you had even more ways of sitting back and seeing enemies tortured. You could place mines all over the battle map, and see moredhel keep stumbling over them. With Mad God's Rage, you'd see the most powerful enemies brought to their knees by a lightning storm striking each one of them until they are dead. You could have Rusalki surround them and pound them with missiles, with them having nowhere to go. And you could have a single Firestorm push back all of them away or kill them simultaneously.
All in all, I guess if a game can't make you feel pounded down upon and abused, it can at least still make you feel like an ultimate destroyer. The only thing that is bad is the middle ground of having small ordinary weapons and equipment and still easily killing all enemies in the game.